Mrs Rupa Mehra has one aim as the novel opens in 1951: to find a suitable husband for her younger daughter Lata, a university student in the fictional Gangetic city of Brahmpur. Lata, thoughtful and wary of being managed, finds herself weighing three very different men, a charming Muslim classmate, a famous poet and a hard-working shoe-company manager.
Around this courtship Vikram Seth builds a panoramic portrait of four families, the Mehras, Kapoors, Khans and Chatterjis, during India's first general election. Subplots follow the abolition of zamindari estates, a riot at a temple-mosque site, the leather and shoe trade, a courtesan's music, and a minister's wayward son, so politics and private life constantly brush against each other.
At nearly 1,400 pages it is one of the longest single-volume novels in English, yet it reads easily, in clear, gently ironic prose with nineteenth-century patience. It won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the WH Smith Literary Award, and was adapted for BBC television by Mira Nair in 2020.
Book details
| Author | Vikram Seth |
|---|---|
| First published | 1993 |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Literary fiction |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 1349 |
| Setting | Brahmpur (fictional), Calcutta and Delhi, 1951 to 1952 |
| Awards | Commonwealth Writers' Prize 1994, WH Smith Literary Award 1994 |
Themes
- Arranged marriage
- Post-independence politics
- Hindu-muslim relations
- Family duty
- Choice and freedom
Who should read it
Readers who love long, immersive family novels in the tradition of Tolstoy and Austen, set in early independent India.
If you liked this, try
- Midnight's Children
- Middlemarch
- Such a Long Journey